Dance
655 results
Page 52
BalletX's Spring Series (1st review)
Ballet for people who don't particularly like ballet
Classical ballet has become a closed and rigid system. BalletX offers an antidote, opening up ballet to new movements and new forms of expressiveness.
Articles
3 minute read
Pennsylvania Ballet's Chopin Celebration
Experiments with Chopin
Choreographers Matthew Neenan and Jerome Robbins both heard something in Chopin's work that suggested movements far removed from gentle early 19th-Century dances. Combine the three of them, as Pennsylvania Ballet's Roy Kaiser did, and you have an exciting program combination.
Articles
5 minute read
Pennsylvania Ballet's "Program II'
Mathew Neenan takes (too many) liberties
Pennsylvania Ballet's version of Balanchine's Four Temperaments demonstrates that artists know more about life than philosophers. Matthew Neenan's take on Carmina Burana, on the other hand, tells us more about the artist than about life.
Articles
4 minute read
Pink Hair Affair's "Take It Off!'
This was burlesque— or was it?
Pink Hair Affair's Take It Off! purports to blend burlesque and modern dance, although its pieces rarely achieve a mix of either.
Articles
3 minute read
New Zealand's Black Grace at the Kimmel
Samoan energy heads west
In a memorable performance, the thrilling and brilliantly executed New Zealand company Black Grace integrated many aspects of modern dance with Samoan and South Pacific indigenous dance forms. The result was no cut-and-paste assemblage, but a new art form.
Articles
6 minute read
Elizabeth Streb's "Brave' at Annenberg (4th review)
The meaning in her movements
Elizabeth Streb is a charismatic, kinetic physicist who plumbs the stripped-down elements of dance movement: space, time and especially energy. Her movement “actions” are presented without the baggage of what many expect from dance, such as narrative, metaphoric representations of the body, eye-appealing forms and grace.
Articles
7 minute read
Elizabeth Streb's "Brave' at Annenberg (3rd review)
Movement without meaning
Elizabeth Streb, the eponymous “action architect and choreographer” of STREB, received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1997. But is Brave a work of genius, or a very ambitious workout?
Articles
3 minute read
Elizabeth Streb's "Brave' at Annenberg (2nd review)
The fear factor
Streb is a dance company that's more about physicality than dance. The choreography aspect simply means the movements have been staged so no one gets hurt. The drama lies in the chance that someone might.
Articles
5 minute read
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Elizabeth Streb's "Brave' at Annenberg (1st review)
The Evel Knievel of dance (but is it dance?)
Elizabeth Streb's take on dance and space has added danger, experimentation and a fascination with things mechanical that can propel the body beyond what it can achieve on its own, but not much in the way of dance moves.
Articles
4 minute read
Dancing for his life in Rwanda
Rwanda's dancing orphans— the sequel: One boy who fell through the cracks
Eighteen months ago I had the rare privilege of teaching dance to a unique group of orphans victimized by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. When I returned last month I discovered that the sponsoring group has folded, the safe house is gone, and these kids are back on the streets of Kigali. The solution to their problem is costly by African standards— and piddling by ours.
Articles
4 minute read